


From The Bottom Of My Glass

by LananiA3O



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Prompt Fic, Swearing, zero spellcheck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Receiving an invitation to a private Wayne even while still publicly unacknowledged leaves Jason hanging out at a bar wondering where he went wrong in life. Unfortunately things go from bad to worse...





	From The Bottom Of My Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlgamer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/gifts).



> Omg, I am writing batfam stuff again. Wow, it's been a while.
> 
> Anyway, this is to fill a prompt I received months ago from Phantomchick. Continuity is about three years after Convergence (so basically Post Crisis wild west).
> 
> Hope you enjoy it, girl :)

It had started with the invitation.

Such a cute little piece of paper it had been, fluttering out of the overflowing stack of bills and ads that had suffocated his half-broken, rusty mailbox with such grace, he had half-expected to find it coated in legit fairy dust or some shit like that. It would not have been the weirdest message he had ever received. But, no, it had not been fairy dust. Just the glittery sheen of premium quality envelope paper that cost more than most people in Gotham made in a week. His address had been written on it in deep, rich, royal blue ink, probably worth just about as much as the envelope. More importantly, it had been written in Alfred’s hand. He remembered how his heart had skipped a beat in foolish excitement, that little glimmer of warmth that had spread through his chest at the realization that this was a message from _Alfred_ for _him_.

Jason took another shot.

He had left the invitation for last. He remembered that too. He hadn’t wanted to spoil the glowy feeling from Alfred’s message by following it up with an overdue heating bill or another letter from the hospital inviting him to crowd-source payment for a broken rib. He had been perfectly content to hate on capitalism first and enjoy the fuzzies last. After all, what else were fuzzies good for?

And then he had gotten to the actual letter. Oh boy.

Jason took another shot.

His excitement had lasted until the second sentence. Alfred had had the common courtesy to start with a greeting and a perfunctory well-wishing phrase at least, which told Jason that it had not been Bruce who had picked the words.

He had picked the content, though. Oh boy, had he picked the content...

Jason dug the crumpled, holey piece of paper—he vaguely remembered having gone at it with a steak knife almost a week ago and then leaving it in his moth-infested closed before taking it to Finnigan’s tonight—out of one of the pockets of his jeans and read the main paragraph again, just to see if maybe the lack of alcohol back then had been messing with his reading comprehension.

Nope. Bruce really had invited him to Tim fucking Drake’s engagement party.

There were too many words wrong with that sentence.

Jason took another shot.

“Son, you keep this up, you gonna be drunk as a skunk and out like a light in fifteen minutes.”

Jason didn’t bother to look up from the letter. “Then gimme some fries. Extra salty. All the salt. Pretend I’m a garden slug in your mother’s fucking rose bed.”

There was a beleaguered grunt from the other side of the letter, but Jason couldn’t have cared less. Bane could have walked into this bar right now, challenging him to a Santa Priscan rum drinking contest with his spine on the line and he couldn’t have cared less.

Bruce had invited him to Tim fucking Drake’s engagement party.

Where to start?

“Poor fucking girl,” was somehow the first thing that came out of his mouth and yet, while his brain objected at the notion, his heart knew it was true. There weren’t many people in the bat clan he was comfortable being around, even now, three years after Bruce’s ‘death’. As a matter of fact, there was only one, but that one just happened to be Stephanie Brown. Batgirl. On/off. Kind of. More importantly, Tim’s ex.

Jason sighed, raised his glass, and barely suppressed a whine at finding it empty.

Did Stephanie get an invite to this engagement shindig as well? Jason wouldn’t put it past Bruce. Or Tim for that matter. Fucking oblivious pricks with the empathic capacity of garden gnomes. He could just picture Tim’s confused and slightly offended—‘miffed’ is probably what Alfred would call it—reaction at Stephanie’s shouting and screaming at him. God, Jason hoped that was what Stephanie was going for. God knew she deserved it for having put up with Tim and his entitlement and his sexist bullshit and all of it. Jason hoped she had gone full harpy on him like something out of a revenge flick from the 70s. Maybe Tim would grasp just enough of it to not invite her to the wedding.

If there was going to be a wedding. Jason rolled his eyes. If Tamara Fox was half as smart as her dad—and yes, the letter had made it very clear that this was indeed Lucius Fox’s daughter—she’d run for the hills before setting so much as a single foot inside the fucking church. She could do so much better. Jason had never met her, but he was about 95% certain that she could do better. Probably deserved it too.

“Here’s your fries, kid. Extra salty.”

“Thanks.”

A small plate appeared underneath his hands. Jason reached down absently, groped for a soggy stick of potato, and relished the taste on his lips as he shoved it down his gullet. That was some good salt. He was already getting thirsty.

“Keep the shots coming, Paul. I’m not done yet.”

Oh boy, he wasn’t.

He was just about pondering what horrified him more—the idea that Tim likely nearly forgot to invite him and Bruce had insisted on sending this letter or the notion that he could have possibly received mail from Tim fucking Drake himself—when the sound of a familiar name caught his ear.

Fuck the bat training. Even when he was off the clock and trying to get drunk, his ears still defaulted to constant alertness and selective hearing.

“I am now live with multi-billionaire Bruce Wayne,” Vicki Vale chirped pleasantly at the camera and just the sight of her fake smile made Jason wish the half pound of make-up would drip from her face right now and leave her running for the hills. Sadly, tonight was not the night. Where was silly prankster Joker when you needed him?

“Mr. Wayne, there have been some exciting rumors going around social media of your adopted son, Tim Drake, proposing to his sweetheart of two years and daughter of Wayne Enterprise’s CEO, Tamara Fox. Can you confirm or deny?”

“I am happy to confirm, Vicki! Yes, the rumors are true.” Bruce flashed one of those perfect playboy smiles he put on for the camera. Perfect as the suit. Fake as Vicki’s make-up. Jason shoved a few more fries into his mouth. “That’s probably not one you hear from rich folks often, is it?”

“No it’s not.” A fake laugh. Vicki was good at this. Stellar performance. Fuck. “Has a date for the wedding been set yet?”

“It’ll be in August,” Bruce answered lightly, “but the exact date shall, unfortunately, remain a secret. Both my son and my future daughter-in-law wish to maintain some semblance of privacy.”

“Understandable.” Thinly veiled disappointment. Fake cheer. “Will we get to see some photos of the grand day at least?”

“Photos and interviews with both the groom and the bride, after they return from the honeymoon. I’m sure Gotham has a lot of questions for both of them.”

Jason nearly coughed up a particularly badly chewed fry. Yeah, they’d have questions alright. Half of them would be absolutely brain-dead clichés and the other half would be hard-on-the-NDA-pushing questions about industrial secrets. Sadly, Jason was certain Tim was too smart to make a fool of himself, but he took comfort in the idea that he would find that interview mind-numbingly boring at best and a colossal waste of his time at the worst. The thought made Jason feel all warm and fuzzy inside again.

“You must be very proud of him, Mr. Wayne. Of all three of your sons.”

“Three sons and a daughter, actually, Ms. Vale,” Bruce corrected with a tone so light, it made feathers look like fucking dumbbells. “I did adopt Cassandra Cain not too long ago.”

Vicki, saving both her face and her ass, reacted quickly by gushing in more detail about the only Wayne daughter.

Jason took another shot.

Oh, good. He was getting shots again. Hallelujah! At least Paul here hadn’t abandoned him.

Not like someone else.

Three. Three sons.

Dick Grayson.

Tim Drake.

Damian Wayne.

“Four.”

“Come again?” Paulie peered at him from the other side of a grease stain Jason’s fries-feeding hand had left on the fancy paper. So much for one week’s pay.

“Put another four shots on my tab.” Jason grinded his teeth. “Keep ‘em coming, Paulie.”

Bruce should have said ‘four’. He had included Tim and Dick, so he wasn’t having any of this ‘adoption doesn’t count’ bullshit today, but somehow that only made it worse. At least whenever the media pulled that one, it was easy not to think about it, easy to exclude himself from the narrative.

But ‘three’?

He took another fry. This time, Jason ate slowly, deliberately chewing and swallowing. He could taste the potato. He could taste the salt. He could even taste the faint tang of burn where the edge was brown. He could feel the mushy texture on his tongue and the rougher texture in his hand. He could taste the salt. He could feel it trigger the receptors in his tongue. He could taste. He could feel. He could see. Quite evidently, he could still hear. He could smell the alcohol from the shot of rum in front of him.

_I can see. I can hear. I can smell. I can taste. I can feel._

_I’m alive._

Jason knew it. Alfred knew it. Bruce knew it. Tim knew it. He wouldn’t have gotten the fucking invitation if they didn’t. They knew.

And they refused to admit it. Cowards.

Jason took another shot.

They were fucking cowards! He slammed the glass down and released it quickly, before temptation would lead him to a palm full of shattered glass. They knew. They knew he was alive. They invited him to the fucking engagement party. They knew he had an address under his real name. No aliases, no masks, no cover-ups. They knew he was here.

Yet whenever someone asked, it was like he had never existed. Not that anyone ever asked about him. They asked about Damian and Tim. Sometimes about Dick. Sometimes, almost as an afterthought, they’d remember that—oh shit—there was female in the family too now—oops my bad!

But they never asked about Jason.

And no-one ever suggested talking about him either.

“Cowards.”

Jason took another shot.

He remembered Oliver Queen coming back from death. He remembered Superman. Fuck, Bruce himself had returned from the dead for all that anyone in Gotham knew. And it was fucking Gotham. People disappeared and were erroneously declared dead all the time here. Social services were like a revolving door in this city. The court probably put ‘falsely declared dead’ on their fucking Bingo cards.

And yet here he was. Less than a ghost. They didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge that he had been here, anymore. No “my three sons are amazing and I’m only sad my fourth son, Jason, cannot be here to celebrate with us”. No “April is a hard time for me, because I mourn the loss of my brother”. No “sometimes I can still hear his voice”.

He wasn’t even good enough for a fucking meme anymore. He wasn’t good enough for an invitation directly from the groom-to-be. He wasn’t worth a visit in person. He wasn’t worth anything but a quick call when someone was ass-deep in crime and needed another mask to pull them out.

He was nothing. To them.

“When, Bruce?”

He had directed the question at the TV, but Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale were already gone. The weather report was predicting more rain, which was about as useful as tits on a washing machine, given that this was fucking Gotham City, home of the perma-rain and masked lunatics of all DND alignments. In his mind, the rest of the question bounced around his skull.

 _When did you write me off for good, Bruce? Was it after Arkham? Was it after I nearly killed Damian and Tim? Was it after New York? Did Dick tell you about that? Was it after the night you threw a fucking batarang into my neck?_ The scar dutifully started itching like a colony of fire ants. _Was it after I beat the crap out of Tim? Was it after I died? Was it after we met in Ethiopia? Was it after Gloria and Felipe?_

_Was it before?_

Fuck, he hoped not. Jason shuddered. It sounded like a freaking joke—the kind that Joker would tell while shoving a tabasco-sauce-coated cattle prod down someone’s esophagus—but there had actually been a time when Bruce had been everything to him and he had been everything to Bruce. Or at least so it had seemed. The memories were getting vaguer every day, blurring behind a film of glowing green slush and harsh reality, but for now, Jason remembered.

He remembered collecting first editions with Bruce. He remembered the smile on his face when Jason handed in solid A report cards. He remembered nights in the cave, with coffee and tea and sparring and crime-solving and how proud Bruce had seemed whenever Jason had gotten it right. He remembered Christmas and Halloween and New Year’s in a safe and warm place, with all the food he could ever eat. How Alfred had beamed with delight at Jason’s culinary appraisal. Bruce telling him to slow down lest he lose a finger, with a smile that could light up all the deco outside. He remembered the joy and warmth in the room, almost so real and tangible that he had been sure it was about to manifest as a shining, golden-haired being from another plain of existence, as Bruce had signed the document that declared Jason his son, by every law of god and man.

There had been a time he had been able to remember the words. There had been a time he would have been able to recite the whole damn thing.

Nowadays, he barely remembered how many sentences there had been.

_When, Bruce? When?_

He wasn’t going to ask how.  There could have been a billion reasons, depending on the when. Jason knew he had done wrong. Fuck, he had done so much wrong.

“Hey, Paulie.” The bartender looked at him with a raised brow. Jason put down the letter—no good would come from reading it again, same bullshit, different hour—and did his best to wipe any and all emotion off of his face. “Imagine you’d adopted a kid that you love to the moon and back. What would it take for you to act like they’re dead and thankfully so?”

Paulie didn’t answer, but the way his eyes narrowed, the way his entire face seemed to darken, the way his fingers dug into the rag he was using to clean the bar—all of it told enough of a story.

“Nevermind.” Jason shrugged. “Stupid weird question. Probably get a dozen of those each hour. My bad.”

Jason took another shot

Then, he tore a tiny piece off of the letter, put it in the glass and lit it on fire.

“If you’re lighting up my bar, cops will be the least of your worries,” Paulie warned. Jason murmured something in return. He was too busy watching the flames dance. He tore off another piece. Then another. Good riddance, fake-ass polite letter. Sorry for the trouble, Alfie. Fuck you, Bruce. Fuck you, Tim. Run for the hills, Tammy.

“It would take the fooking Apocalypse.”

It was the accent rather than the words that made Jason look up. He had been to Finnigan’s many times, yet he had never heard Paulie talk with anything but a standard Gotham American accent.

“I got three lads. One’s mine. One’s my wife’s. One’s adopted, and they’d have to trigger the fooking Apocalypse, trumpets and horsemen and fire and brimstone and all that, for me to treat’em like they’re dead. Hell, probably not even then. They’re my kids after all.”

“Apocalypse. Got it.”

Okay, he hadn’t gone that far yet. He had fucked up Gotham a bit, but nothing on the scale of global annihilation. Bruce was clearly over-reacting.

“Jason?!”

_Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck fuck fucking no fuck off!_

“Jason is that you?”

“No, I’m a shapeshifting robot from the future come to find the chosen one and kill him before he can bring down my glorious master race.”

It was the heavy pause that told Jason he was actually considering it. Truth be told, it probably wasn’t the weirdest thing that had ever happened in Gotham.

Jason took a deep breath and turned around.

Dick Grayson looked like a fish out of water. Like a pearl in a bag of coal. Clothes clean, hair done, fucking eyebrows plucked, which probably meant he was back to modeling, and even in this piss bar in the Bowery he still smelled like something out of a fabric softener commercial.

“I’m not hallucinating this, am I?” He pecked slowly at Dick’s leather jacket. Definitely real. Normally leather was a good look for this bar, except of course that this was Gucci. “You’re asking to get mugged, you know that, Dickie?”

“So are you,” Dick lobbed back. “What’s you BAC right now? I saw your bike outside. Bet I could pull you over the moment you hit the gas.”

“You’re no longer a cop, Dickie. Haven’t been for a while.”

Jason took another shot.

Judging from Dick’s face, it took him every ounce of control not to let his eyebrows climb higher.

“What do ya want? Are you stalking me? Cos if you’re stalking me, I’m gonna punch you in the face right now.”

Behind the bar, Paulie shifted away from the other patron he had been talking to and back closer to Jason. Don’t pull any shit. Message received. Thanks, Paul.

“Would you believe me if I said I just fancied a post-workout snack and this is the closest joint?”

“No.” Jason grinned. “But you can have my fries if you want.” He pushed the plate over, snatched one last fry, and ate it as loudly as he could. “Extra salty, just for you.”

“Jason, you’re drunk.”

“I wish. Hey, Paul!”

The bartender gave him a second, full glass with a quick sigh.

Jason took another shot.

“I see you got the letter.”

And here we go. Jason wanted to laugh. Of course this was no coincidence. Of course this was what this was about.

“We were afraid it had gotten lost in the mail,” Dick tried again.

Jason scoffed. “Oh please, for fuck’s sake, Dick, if you’re gonna lecture me, at least fucking lecture me and don’t start me on this ‘oh, haha, maybe it was just an honest mistake’ bullshit. This fucking thing was delivered via courier in an envelope worth more than that courier’s salary. They would not have misplaced the fucking letter if their life depended on it.”

But hey, perhaps he should thank Dick. This was a good reminder of where he had left off. Some puny little melody latched onto his brain and his vocal cords as he went back to building his little fire. To his surprise, Paul had switched the glass for an ashtray. “Wow, thanks, Paulie! Very kind of you.”

To his left, Dick shifted slightly. Maybe it was annoyance. Maybe discomfort. Maybe both. “Well, we’re still waiting for your reply. Tim wants to finalize the guest list this weekend.”

“Good for Tim.” Another bit of paper burned. Jason enjoyed watching the flames. They also made him sick, made him feel the heat and smell the power and hear the red ticking. Fucking joke his brain was.

“Jason, please. Are you going to attend or not?”

Jason paused. He flicked his lighter shut and put down what was left of the blasted letter. Suddenly, the flames looked green again, boiling in his veins. He clenched and unclenched his fists, closed his eyes and counted to ten. That was what Guy had suggested. Relax the muscles, focus the mind. Breathe deeply. Feel the air in your lungs.

It tasted like soot and ash. It felt like dying.

“I am burning the fucking letter.”

That was what he finally latched on to. He was tempted to let it stand as his only answer, because really, any idiot with half a brain should be able to put one and to together, but he just knew, he just fucking knew that Dick was gonna push it. And if he wasn’t, Jason would probably have a six-foot bat climbing into his apartment tonight. Jason made a memo to burn the place to the ground before dawn. After evacuating everyone of course. That’s what bomb threats were made for.

“Why did they send you?” He was part curious, part furious. Curfurious. Furcurious. Something like that. “Did they just go ‘oh, Dick’s great with people, surely he’ll be the one least likely to suffer attempted murder at the hand of the black sheep’? Or did you guys at least have enough brains to consider asking Steph? Oh, wait! You guys didn’t fucking invite her, did ya? Well, bullet fucking dodged. She’s a lucky girl.”

“Tim did send her a letter—“

“Oh, she got one directly from Tim? Not from Bruce in Alfred’s handwriting?” Jason consigned more paper to the flames. “Wow, my reputation really is below the Earth’s crust, isn’t it?”

“She sent it back with ‘fuck no’ written on it in purple nail polish.”

“Oh bless her!” Jason laughed. “Steph, you beautiful angel! Yeah, that’s my answer right there. Fuck no.”

“Jason—“

“NO!” He hadn’t meant to shout, yet somehow that’s the sound that had come out of his mouth. A shout. Loud enough to drown out the music. Loud enough to drown out the TV. Loud enough to turn half the heads in the bar towards him. Good. Time for the proverbial apocalypse.

“Tell Bruce I am fucking DONE with his shit! Tell Tim he can cram his engagement party up his entitled ass! Tell Tammy to run for the hills or at least give her Steph’s number! I am not going to the fucking party!”

Dick’s face sank. There was disappointment, yes, but also—and Jason wasn’t quite sure whether he was happy about it or not—relief. “Sorry to hear that—“

“No you’re fucking not!”

“Hey, zip it,” someone shouted from the other side of the bar. Jason flipped them the bird automatically and continued at full volume. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe not. Either way, he could not foresee any scenario in which he would regret this conversation.

“Fuck you, Dick! Fuck you! Fuck Bruce! Fuck Tim and Damian and fuck all of ya’ll! You come crawling to me when you need something, when you want something, but the moment someone asks about the family, it’s like I’m no longer fucking there! Like I never was!”

He took a deep breath.

“Well, newsflash, Dickie! I WAS there! Fuck, he adopted ME first! I used to be everything to him and now I might as well still be dead! But I’m not! I don’t care how much ya’ll pretend I never came back, but I did and if you think that you can treat me like some fucking family skeleton in the scary dark closet that you only pull out when none of the cameras are looking, then fuck you! Tim wouldn’t be caught dead inviting me if this fucking engagement thing was anywhere remotely public and you know it!

 “Considering the way you’re behaving right now, I don’t blame him.”

The punch flew before he knew what he was doing and apparently that was what it took to catch Dick at least somewhat by surprise. He still managed to dodge, but the shock was clear on his face.

Jason steadied himself again—well, at least as far as he could, what with the floor starting to feel like marshmallows—and returned to his seat by the bar. “Paulie, gimme a glass. Not a shot. A proper glass.”

“You sure, son?”

“Affirmative.”

He slipped over the combined total for his tab and the same amount again in tips and waited for the alcohol to arrive. From the corner of his right eye, Jason could see that at least four different guys were starting to really like his wallet. Poor them.

“Jason, you know why—“

“La la la la la la!” He finished with the rest of the letter while drowning out the noise. Only once the last piece had gone up in flames and Paulie had handed him a whiskey glass filled to the brim with Santa Priscan rum did Jason turn back to his older brother.

Supposed brother. Technically brother. He wasn’t delusional enough to believe that their relationship extended further than a paper trail.

“Dickie, imma say this once, and only once: none of ya’ll give a shit about me and I know it. I just wish you’d fucking own it. And this fucking invitation? It’s a goddamn insult straight to my face. It’s been three years since Convergence, Dickie. Three years. This is the first time any of you have invited me to _anything_ and what’s it you’re inviting me to? Oh, right, an opportunity to see how amazing Tim is! Oh, look at him, with his successful job and his successful connections! He’s banging the CEO’s daughter and he’s gonna marry her! Woohoo! He’s got his life together and did I mention he’s a real improvement over the last traffic light intern? Come, bask in his glory and wish him good fortune while we staunchly refuse to acknowledge that _you_ even exist!”

“Jason...” To Dick’s credit, his voice had audibly softened. Hell, there seemed to be something akin to compassion there, fake as it was. “You do know none of this is Tim’s fault, right? Be angry with Bruce or with me if you want, but don’t let it out on Tim. Or Damian for that matter.”

“Let it out?” Jason had to stifle a laugh. “Wow... wow... bold of you to assume that he’ll even notice if I won’t be there. You know what?” He stabbed his finger against Dick’s chest. “Fuck you, you hypocritical prick! I remember the shouting matches you had with Bruce, back when I came in. I remember how jealous you were that he adopted me first. I bet it feels good to have me out of the picture.”

“What would give you—“

“Fuck! No! That’s my answer, right there. I ain’t coming to the fucking party. I ain’t coming to the fucking wedding. I hope you all choke on the goddamn cake.”

Jason raised his glass and started drinking. The rum felt good in his throat, even though he knew he was going to regret it. Whatever Dick was going to say next, he wasn’t going to stick around to hear it. Finally, as the last few drops ran down his throat, Jason raised his hand for another toast.

“From the bottom of my glass, fuck you, Dick, and fuck Tim and Bruce, too!”

Jason set the glass down, grabbed his fries, and left.


End file.
